There are billions of electronically communicating devices in use in 2013. Many of these devices are wireless devices such as smartphones, tablets, personal computers (PCs), media players and readers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), headsets, cameras, vehicles, wearable fitness and health monitoring devices, and others. Many of these devices use some form of electromagnetic (EM) or radio frequency (RF) technology for communications with other devices, with communication systems provided by wireless service providers and other businesses that provide data communications services, and ultimately with the Internet. Many of these devices are connected to the Internet by wireless communications, forming the growing “Internet of Things” (IoT). With some 9 billion wireless devices in use today, this number is expected to multiply due to business and consumer demands.
Many individuals now carry one or more of these devices everywhere they go. For example, in the United States and other modern societies, it is common for a person to carry a smartphone, a tablet, a wearable fitness device, and a wireless headset as they go about their business, attend school, and attend to their home lives. These devices have become like an adjunct appendage to a person's physical self. Such devices are often the first thing taken by a person when leaving home, school, or the office. Many people feel a sense of disconnection or detachment if one of their devices malfunctions, is lost or stolen, or is forgotten.
An individual's overall persona is uniquely associated with a particular individual. Conventional personal characteristics such as name, height, weight, hair color, are often used, together with other information, to authenticate individuals for purposes of financial transactions, electronic access to systems, and physical access to facilities such as offices, schools, buildings, etc. Three-factor authentication typically uses information representing (1) what you are (personal identifying characteristics such as eye color, facial hair, weight, etc.), (2) what you have (an access card, a specific smartphone, a key, etc.), and (3) what you know (a personal identifying number (PIN), a Social Security Number (SSN), a secret password, etc.).
Because electronic personas are becoming ubiquitous, they can be used to assist in authentication, building security, policy enforcement, and other applications that require awareness of individuals, their locations, their safety, their access rights, and the like. The present disclosure provides a novel approach to using electronic personas for safely and privately executing various purposes.
For example, modern businesses, government, and educational institutions invariably have security and information technology (IT) departments that handle physical and electronic security to facilities, assets, and systems. These security departments often do not have clear visibility into their most important assets—their people. Despite the presence of video and physical security systems, when an incident occurs, security personnel are often forced to sift through aged access control data and must use manual processes to locate personnel and assist them. The data from a morning session of access card “swipe in” data is of little help without an egress monitor, as people come and go during the day, or move around in a facility.
Similarly, certain institutions such as investment banks with separated groups of research analysts and investment bankers sometimes impose “ethical barriers” or access and presence rules within the institution to ensure compliance with internal policies and procedures, as well as compliance with legal regulations and laws. Ethical barriers are hard to enforce using existing access control systems, since there may be no physical barriers within the institution with separate (and expensive) internal access control. Existing access control systems do not readily allow for internal identification of the whereabouts of particular individuals within an organization's facilities, or prevent behavior such as “piggy-backing” of an unauthorized individual into a controlled facility with an authorized individual, whether innocently or nefariously.
Furthermore, institutions typically have a need to know where their people are in time of a crisis or emergency. Buildings and facilities typically issue an evacuation alarm in the event of a fire, earthquake, weather event, criminal act, activist disruption or vandalism, or terrorist activity. While remote video monitoring is the predominant means of evacuation measures, video monitoring does not allow for accounting of particular individuals, or determination that particular individuals have may not have evacuated or may be in distress from the event or from a medical emergency.